It tried to keep the humans alive, if only so that they could cut down golems better.

  It flit through legs and swinging weapons, and helped when it saw a chance.

  A man with a shield was using an electric spear to jab into the golems to great effect, and as the man holding the line beside him lost his nerve and began to backpedal, his flank opened.

  A golem forced through, a jagged spike glowing red hot as it wound back to pierce the man’s shoulder.

  A quick [Sonic Blast] to the golem’s blade had the man tumbling to the side and the golems stumbling back for a moment.

  It darted in, low and quick, a cloud of darkness swallowing the area around it, claws extended to the furthest they could go, several inches of ivory swiping through metallic joints and liquid reservoirs before darting back into the human lines, pulling the shadows close to its skin.

  The man took position again, holding the line against the two hobbling golems, if only barely, as from above him, spells and explosives rained into the golems’ backline, thinning out the reinforcements.

  On the left side of the field, there was no line. It was just a chaotic melee, where the golems had mixed through the humans and were in largely isolated clusters.

  The golems didn’t seem to recognize the darkness cloud as the wolf yet, so it exploited that fact for a few more seconds, by using a defending human’s shoulder like a springboard, and jumping into the melee, a twenty-foot sphere of darkness around it choking out all sight and sound.

  The humans immediately backpedalled in panic, straight out of the cloud.

  The golems either pushed forward and followed the humans out by sheer luck, or whirled and started swinging in the dark wildly.

  It was almost easy to slip through their attacks and pounce on them, tearing them to pieces one at a time. It didn’t even have to use any of its numerous tools.

  It had kind of forgotten how overwhelmingly powerful it was to be able to render something unable to neither see nor hear it.

  Chainsaws and buzzsaws caught on its fur sometimes, leaving patches of fur to clog their mechanisms, and thin cuts to dot its flanks, but it had quickly dispatched four golems, and assumedly saved four humans.

  There were about twenty of the original sixty-something humans left, and fifty-something golems of the original one hundred or so.

  Even if the wolf helped, the humans just couldn’t beat the numbers, especially when each golem was so individually powerful.

  Corpses were interspersed along the ground as it bounced from golem to golem, intestines strewn with wires and blood mixed with oil, flesh and iron plates smeared across the courtyard.

  In the course of jumping onto another golem, it felt something that had it pause in its tracks, turning around.

  The golems were climbing onto the second floor from the corner of the courtyard using each other as ladders, a bunch of harpoons anchored into the second floor’s metal, acting like climbing ropes.

  It hesitated for a bit, wondering if it was worth it to go back and stop them.

  Between Katherine inside, and the adventurers on the second floor, along with the hundreds of civillians providing an ample meat shield and delay until the golems made it down, it decided that it had enough time.

  The lines collapsed on the other side too. The entire courtyard was a chaotic melee by now, everyone for themselves.

  A human pounded on the closed doors, trying to break them down, screaming something back to the crowd. Whatever it was, it drew the attention of several of the humans, many of them going for the door in a fighting retreat.

  The giant with the cannon strapped to his shoulder, bloodied and exhausted, turned around, hefting it towards the door as he kicked a golem away like it was a toy.

  He was going to blow the doors open.

  The wolf activated [Bloodrush], launching forwards as it shot a [Sonic Blast] straight into the giants’ face, making his head snap back, the man stumbling back in confused shock, dizzy and bleeding from his nose.

  The wolf’s cloud enveloped them both as it blurred forward, sliding past his legs as the tentacle’s bone blade whistled through the air, cutting through most of his neck in a single swipe.

  Just to be sure, it jumped up his back, buried its claws into his head, and pulled back, his spine snapping and flesh tearing as the head came off cleanly enough for it to lob it off towards the golems, pushing off of him and darting back into the chaos, hoping the humans hadn’t quite managed to catch onto what it did in the heat of battle.

  It seemed like it was wrong, because the next moment, a gigantic fireball illuminated the battle from above, and the eyes on its hip and sides widened as the flaming ball rocketed towards the wolf.

  In a flash of remembrance, its mind flashed back to the cable lift where it last fought a fire mage. If it worked then, it should work now.

  It whipped around, a desperate [Sonic Blast] slamming into the fireball.

  The fireball detonated a mere dozen feet above it.

  The swirling blast of air from [Sonic Blast] amplified it tenfold, feeding the fire.

  Dust and debris rained from above as the rubble settled, and the wolf bounced off the floor from the sheer impact of the shockwave, its ribs bruised as it tumbled between a few golems, [Echoes of Oblivion] slipping from its grasp as its head slammed through the shoulder of a golem, brain rattled, ears ringing but regenerating rapidly as it flailed to land on its feet, sliding a couple feet.

  Every biped was thrown on their backs for a moment.

  Flames filled the shadowed passage, swirling with a roar as the wind dragged them around, raking against the wolf’s flank as it backpedalled, eyes clenched shut, before the flames abruptly snuffed out like a candle, their source gone, spent, leaving only a flaming sea of oil splatters and boiling blood.

  The humans didn’t recover fast enough, some scrambling up with bleeding ears only to be torn to pieces by the golems, flames still eating at them.

  The golem’s focus only lasted until they saw it, and then, as one, they all turned, and descended on the wolf, sprinting forwards, humans forgotten.

  It pushed out the cloud of shadow, but it seemed that they had realized the trick by now, and none of them stopped, instead charging straight towards it.

  It ducked and dodged and rolled away from weapons and grasping metallic fingers, trying to regain its bearings.

  It was deep in the ranks of the golems now, surrounded on all sides, opposite the door entirely.

  In the break, the last dozen human fighters left on the ground floor gathered together close to the door, seemingly trying to gather their breath and wits, keeping their distance, grouping up again.

  The wolf couldn’t dodge forever.

  A metallic hand clasped shut on a fistful of fur, and the iron-reinforced fibers did not tear, bringing the wolf to a stop as its hands and legs scrabbled at the ground for a moment, the golem getting dragged forward a little.

  The wolf turned, a flash of its claws cutting through the wrist.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Three golems, sharing senses seemingly, descended on it.

  Finding no upside in keeping [Echoes of Oblivion] active anymore, it turned the skill off, and twisted.

  A chainsaw descended on its shoulder.

  It twisted its waist to let it brush past its upper back, curling its arm close to let the saw crash into the floor, then unwound in a quick backhand that had its claws phasing through the chainsaw, breaking it as it jumped up, onto the golem’s shoulders, dodging the other two strikes that went past its feet by inches.

  They didn’t stop even then, climbing over each other to get to it.

  The wolf pushed its hind legs out of reach of two metallic nets that rushed through the now empty space, its lower body high up in the air, and used the metallic body its claws were sunken into to throw itself beneath another half-dozen, pulling itself down to the floor, charging out of the encirclement from below, shouldering past stomping legs and buzzsaws.

  It came out the other side half-surrounded again, a golem raising a piston arm to the wolf.

  A bear trap slammed into the limb from the side, snapping shut and dragging the golem to the humans, next to the door.

  Another golem’s chest burst open, a glowing core crackling within.

  Before it could wonder what that was, heat slammed into its entire body, eyes snapping shut out of reflex as its fur burst aflame, the air so hot it charred its nostrils and throat as it took a breath.

  With a snarl infinitely deeper than any puny chainsaw, it whipped the tentacle on its back towards the golem, a venomous spike punching through the crystal.

  The golem exploded, sending the others sprawling and the wolf tumbling back through puddles of oil and blood.

  Wreathed in flame, its breaths worked harder and harder to exhaust the building heat in its body, each exhale a cloud of hissing steam from its nostrils.

  Another bear trap whipped by the wolf’s head, dragging the golem at the forefront of the charge away, revealing another which tried to tackle the wolf, one hand a drill, the other an air cannon.

  [Bloodlust] faded at the worst time, and it barely ducked the blast of air by flattening itself to the flaming ground, then exploding upwards, jaws snapping shut around the golem’s neck as it brought its legs up, and pushed, throwing itself even further back in a simple flip, spitting the golem head out of its mouth to roar a challenge.

  The golems answered in synchronized beats of their feet as they rushed forth, headed by the headless one, not affected in the slightest by losing its head.

  It took three more golems being dismembered in quick, careful strikes, before it found the weak spot.

  The engine in the center of their chest was what moved them, most of them, and the crystal nestled inside where the heart would be on a human was what kept them aware, alive.

  The realization made it a lot easier to kill them with its longest weapon, the tooth-blade on the tip of its tentacle, but it wasn’t enough. There were too many of them.

  It only took mere moments for it to be surrounded again, and it went the only way it could; up, jumping straight on top of the nearest golem and letting the others try to pile on.

  Its scythe-arms jabbed into joints, tore at cables, its human arms spewed fire and batted away whatever they could, while its main arms reached down to tear arms, to gouge through engine blocks and cut through hands and hooks trying to anchor onto its hide.

  Tails flicked around, spewing twin streams of flame, setting everything alight, the heat suffocating, but surprisingly effective, melting through cables, softening metals.

  The wolf scrambled atop a growing stack of golems alive and not, a dozen limbs acting in symphony to just barely keep it atop.

  Chainsaws bit into its sides, barely getting through the fur before the wolf swiped its tentacle’s bone blade through their engine blocks and threw their bodies onto the others scrambling up to it.

  Something like a boltcutter caught its right hind leg from the corner of its field of view, shearing clean through with the snap of a spring.

  With a yowl of pain, it used the stump to kick the golem off, snarling as it buried its fist into a golem’s stomach, tearing out a mass of wire and oil that caught fire immediately, jerking its hip out of the way of another swipe.

  Its humanoid arms reached out to grasp two heads, bashing them together, while its main right arm clamped onto the mess of crushed plate as it activated the bioelectrical charge it had been building up for a while, the golems seizing immediately, damaged into convulsing heaps, wires bleeding melted copper.

  Electricity worked, but it didn’t have enough, not for this many.

  Its prehensile tails swooped in, grabbing limbs and yanking the golems off, buying it time.

  Bear traps on chains would occasionally slam into the golems, pulling them off one at a time.

  It noted, distantly, that [Pack Hunter] was active, Katherine fighting a golem in the stairs inside, a problem for later.

  The humans approached the wolf’s position with hurried steps, trying to pick off some of the golems at the edges of the horde following it.

  They were trying to use it as bait.

  Good idea. It could do that too.

  It scrambled over golems, blades cutting lines through its fur, a [Sonic Blast] at its hind legs giving it enough momentum to spin through the air, over the humans, placing them between the horde and itself.

  They didn’t expect it, nor were they ready, hurriedly breaking ranks, turning to run, cohesion broken, morale shattered.

  The wooden construct with the bear traps broke from the rest to immediately dash close to the wolf, back turned to it as the golems swiftly surrounded and cut down the surprised adventurers, their shrieking cries of agony filling and echoing down the tunnels of rubble.

  For each golem that fell, three humans did the same.

  In the chaos, one of the only golems which seemed to wear something came into view, and it felt its eyes widen with recollection.

  Stolen story; please report.

  An emblem of an eye within a giant gear, paired in red on its torn, smoking rags, half-consumed by flame.

  The wolf had seen it before. After Emhreeil’s first hunt with her new body, on another golem, on walls in the fourth floor, amongst the sump pits… had they been following it all this time? Or had they only now taken notice?

  A golem neared, and the wolf pushed its thoughts away.

  The fight blurred in its mind, in its memories, activating every Skill it had the instant it could, ducking and dashing and diving through, [Echoes of Oblivion] flickering on and off to confuse and blind their attacks, the blade at the tip of its tentacle darting in and out of engine blocks like a knife through water, the modified, hollow tooth it had placed at the tip almost long enough to bisect the thinner golems with one swipe.

  Its claws weren’t enough, despite being the size of small knives. There was too much to cut through.

  It used them to incapacitate, to grab and grapple.

  With one of its hind legs being a fresh stump, it couldn’t fight nearly as well.

  The injuries it sustained kept accumulating, oil and blood, both of its own making, drowning out the flames that licked its hide.

  The construct with the bear trap remained by its side, a whirling tornado of sharpened chain and snapping metal teeth, picking the golems off one by one and en masse, in melee and in ranged combat, its armour thinning by the minute.

  It stopped counting kills after its jaw muscles had started tearing from the strain of biting, after its fingers trembled with weakness, tendons inflamed, skin and flesh joining the slurry on the courtyard’s ground.

  It stopped thinking, when the last of the humans in the courtyard perished.

  It just cut, and slashed, and roared, and tumbled, and gnawed, and howled, and tore, as its flesh was pierced, as its stomach ripped, as its nose and snout was scraped off by a sharpened piece of metal, glowing with heat and shimmering with magic, as it lost one eye, two, three, a tail, an arm, an ear.

  Piece by piece, it was worn down, [Devourer] churning through the wolf’s reserves like a crusher did through pebbles.

  It didn’t remember going inside. Somewhere between the second, much thinner wave of golems arriving, and the inside of the building catching fire. Everything past that was nothing but springs and rivers of oil, shrieking saws and flames sizzling on its back, broken tables and corpses and humans who screamed and wouldn’t stop.

  Bones ground together. Blood clouded its vision. Agony sang across every overtaxed joint, across its charred black skin, its exposed stumps.

  The wooden construct pulled the last golem away from the wolf, wrapped in sharpened chains that spun and raked across its glowing-hot body, chewing through in a sea of sparks, until it finally snapped to pieces, its head crushed beneath a giant steel boot.

  Nothing moved, for a few seconds. Its vision swam as it wavered from side to side, the room subtly spinning.

  In the floor above, a sea of bodies and crying humans, scrambling, around a few golem corpses.

  On the ground floor, a sea of torn mechanics, and sputtering flames, bodies human and not. A wooden construct, armour torn and bent and traps all gone, staring at the wolf, silently.

  The ground shook, a rhythmic thumping.

  It extended its feelers, and fought the urge to run.

  With each footfall of the thing approaching outside, the image cleared, the distance registered.

  It hadn’t noticed. It was too close to run, there was nowhere else to go. This was a dead end.

  The wolf hobbled forward, swallowing the blood in its throat, arms buckling on their own once or twice.

  Through the mangled entrance, doors laying on the ground ajar and bent inwards, in the darkness, it could see its form, thundering forward, just three golems following it.

  It was enormous. A walking building.

  Its heads lingered near the ceiling of rubble, a mish-mash of mishappen machinery, of golems fused into a tower of suffering, metal melting into each other, limbs and weapons jutting out like the branches of a plant. Six legs crashed down in rhythm as it slid forward with mechanical precision. An oversized metal skull, with one face on the back and one in the front, clicked its teeth as it neared, each rap of steel on steel so loud it seemed as if the sound of snapping bolts.

  The wolf faltered, glancing aside to confirm.

  Not a single human in fighting shape still remained around the ground floor of the building, only the wooden construct with the traps.

  What few were still alive were grouped behind Katherine on the second floor, who was acting as the vanguard, scrambling to survive two golems, guiding them away from adventurer and prey humans alike.

  The crab’s upper body did not move with the precision of its bottom half, a long arm made of several twisted bodies swaying, clawing as its own body, with fingers made of arms and joints made of broken metallic spines, as thick as the wolf itself, while its legs glided forward.

  The oversized head crackled to life as it approached, unhurried, each footfall like a hammer on an anvil, each leg thicker than the wolf itself, twenty feet tall as it swayed like a reed in the wind.

  The wolf steadied its shoulders, and glared as it hobbled forwards, brain whirling for something, anything, a trick.

  The bits of debris that tumbled and trickled over them every few seconds gave it an idea.

  Maybe it would work. It didn't have options.

  The head lit up, a mechanical fizz, absolutely deafening in its volume, rasping to life, each syllable rattling the floor, its eardrums, its bones.

  “Beneath the blood sky… Eden’s Garden, ripe, bursting… the chains crack at last. Wol-ghn wolf! …olf… wolf… the last of you, last of you… The Devourer’s last son, es– fuel- fuel for the forge…” Its voice alternated between high pitched whines and booming, thundering snarls, the hissing whines of steam with the static of a tortured radio, dozens of inflections and voices struggling to mash together in a coherent sentence and failing.

  It unfolded, somehow, spikes and blades and drills screaming to life as it broke apart, like a paper laid flat after being curled into a ball, its loom overwhelming, stretching to fill the cavern, wires and pipes pulled taut like veins, shuddering as the colossus sped up.

  “Fe-fghn… thrhg… Fennnnnriiir… Fen…rir… Fenrhmgir! The vestige- t-t-to burn! Come! Come, Fenrir’s last!” The golem howled, screeched, rattled and whirred.

  The wolf froze.

  It didn’t hear the word itself, did not understand it.

  It heard a howl, much like its own, not through its ears, but its bones, its own humming teeth and claws, stretching on for centuries.

  It saw it, a hazy vision springing to life unbidden, familiar, something it had seen before, in the grips of madness.

  In its mind’s eye, a blood red sky weeps crimson into a garden of flesh gouged out by the roots, leaving seas of boiling ichor.

  Far above, beyond the wailing clouds, beyond where sight can reach, chains wider than mountains stretch on beyond the stars, to wrap around something unseen, coiling like snakes as links snap and reform desperately, while the howls of something mad with rage and hunger echo out across eternity.

  Chains… fire-red skies… a million eyes burning in the dark, the light devoured… a gaping maw full of chains that snap beneath the press of its essence.

  The sound was a name it could not say, but it knew it, somehow, someway.

  The colossus’ monstrous legs sped up, two hundred feet rapidly lessening as the wolf stood, frozen, wide eyed.

  It remembered that vision from somewhere. …Back on that cable lift, maybe. When it got [Maddened Frenzy].

  It hurriedly shook its head, pushing strange memories away, eyes flickering to and fro, looking for a solution, a trick, something to overcome the unbelievable gap in power. Its heart thundered, in fear, solitary tail twitching, curling inwards.

  There was none. No escape, no trick.

  So, for the second time in its short life, it charged forward into death in an uneven gait, lightning sparking up and down its right arm along the slime-veins pulsing atop burnt flesh, claws flexed to full length.

  It popped every Skill it had available, then as a hundred appendages rushed forward to meet it, it activated [Maddened Frenzy].

  Then all it saw was red.

  Something howled outside, a horrific, fractalling scrape against her mind, a wet, piercing noise that cracked even the fragments of glass on the floor, made the walls quiver as if made of shuddering flesh, dozens of voices raising to scream in terror.

  The golem pursuing her even paused, as if it knew better than to turn its head, for a mere moment, before the dance of death continued.

  A second later, a light- no, a searing flash of white burned through the holes and gaps in the walls, blinding.

  She swung, ducked, blocked, redirected, muscles in agony.

  Inside, the enemies were clockwork, yet wild. They could be countered, struck, tripped.

  Whenever her eyes glanced at the holes in the walls, the sparse windows leading to outside… all she saw was a storm. Every crash rattled her ribs, made the floor buck like an animal trying to escape beneath her feet, every rush of wind that followed another explosion screaming through the gaps of the wall like the air itself was begging for mercy, whipping debris with enough force to cut through her armour, bouncing off the walls.

  Everything was too loud, too big, too frenzied.

  Something out there was tearing the world apart, and she desperately wished she was wrong about what it was.

  Dust and bolts fell from the rafters, then something crashed into the building, the shadow of metallic limbs flashing through the flames.

  The floor tilted, something folding and snapping with a screech, her boots slipping on gore, barely dodging a swipe.

  Concussive waves slipped through, turning the floor into a misty hellscape of parts grenading everywhere, shutters flying off their hinges like arrows, gore misting in the air.

  The golems kept pushing, trying to get past her, down the stairs, to go outside, to fight whatever was left out there.

  The adventurers didn’t let them, civillians, whatever few lived, scrambling between their line to get below, the others huddling in the corners, nowhere to run.

  After another crash that briefly had her feet disconnected from the ground entirely as the ground bowed in, the walls bent, the metal splitting with ear-grating screeches.

  As she got forced towards a wall, in the corner of her vision, something flashed, too monstrous to belong, too many limbs. Something else moved around, through it, metal legs like pillars, stomping.

  A scream of steel, a sawblade grinding through bone, a crackle of lightning that sparked spots into her vision, before she ducked away from another swipe, losing sight of it.

  The cacophony was joined by weeping prayers, wails of loss, terror from people too ordinary to matter in this war.

  Katherine joined the choir, brain twisting, her lips pulling back in a sneer to scream as she swung, and swung, and parried, in agony, in madness, in despair, barely able to hold her own weapon.

  A woman with blue hair finally got the golem off of her, her shredded kite shield slick with oil, and Katherine collapsed, spots dancing in the vision.

  Then- silence.

  Dead silence, sudden and cold.

  Everyone froze, breaths hushed.

  Whatever was outside, was listening.

  The fear ebbed, as the seconds passed, and they all stumbled down the stairs, whichever few had survived, carrying each other.

  Emhreeil, to her relief, lay in the same spot, untouched by their efforts.

  The remaining Adventurers, numbering only four, inched towards the double doors, barely hanging on by ruined hinges. Katherine joined them, in the back, leaning against a wall and inching forward, on the edge of unconsciousness, wheezing, unable to stand.

  When the doors finally burst open, the wind that rolled in was boiling hot and heavy, a choking miasma of iron and static and burnt oil, choking each breath.

  In the dust and darkness, she didn’t see a victor.

  Just ruins and a broken shape, still breathing.

  With a clink of chains, another shape dropped down from above, next to it, vaguely familiar, a bear trap swinging from its hip as it bent down, and limped forward, dragging the mangled shape forward into the dim light of flaming oil puddles.

  For a moment, Katherine wished the Adventurers, any of them, would have the guts or means to finish it off.

  Nobody did.

  As her vision wavered and swam, darkening rapidly, [Pack Hunter], the wolf’s Skill, flickered out.